Arts & hntertainment
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Andy Manhart/Daily Nebraskan
A gift for anyone at any price in Lincoln
By Micki Haller
Staff Reporter
Santa’s bag of goodies is mixed
this year, Lincoln merchants say.
Gifts range from toy soldiers to
junior science kits to gold ingots.
Suitcase Science is a lop seller at London
Bridge Toy Shoppe in Sutter Place Mall,
said owner Jeanette Rasmussen.
“It’s a best-selling gift for nephews,” she
said.
Rasmussen said she has about 15 differ
ent kits that sell for $6.95. They aren’t
chemistry sets, she said, but they create
scientific toys, such as a kaleidoscope, ro
bot, microscope or land rover.
People who don’t know what to get for
their nephews seem to think this is the thing,
she said.
Rasmussen said she has sold almost 60 of
the kits.
Another popular toy is a carton construe
tion kit, she said.
The $13.49 kit, featured in the November
issue of Parents magazine, shows kids how
to make toys out of cardboard boxes.
It comes with plastic connectors for a box
and the accessories to turn a box into a car or
a cooking stove.
The cardboard box is not included.
Rasmussen said plastic tea sets and toy
soldiers arc also selling well.
At the Toy Room at East Park Plaza,
salesclerk Lori Kathc said play guns arc
selling well.
She said the guns start at $3, but go up to
$25 for an Uzi squirt gun. She said the price
depends on the ammunition and what the
gun is made of.
Kathc said radio-controlled cars, priced
from $59.99 to $ 129.99, arc also big sellers.
Ant farms arc also selling well, she
said. She’s sold 12 since mid
November. The farms come with a
year’s supply of ant food, a liquid feeder,
California sand and an ant watcher’s hand
book. Kaihc said the anis arc not included,
but can be ordered from the company by
mail.
I'he gil t of the season, however, is a word
game called Pictionary, she said.
“We’ve really sold a lot,” Kathe said.
About 25 have been sold since mid
November, she said.
AtThingsville, the most popular gifts are
lamps and potpourri pots, salesclerk Peggy
Wesiphall said.
Touch lamps, which turn on by a touch at
the base, have sold by the dozens, she said.
The lamps cost $29.95 and up, she said.
Fiber-optic lamps sell just as well, she
said. The fiber-optic lamps begin at $ 18.95.
Wesiphall said most of the customers are
adults shopping for other adults.
For the more affluent, Abraham’s Cor
ner, 2708 Y St., is selling gold and silver
ingots.
Owner Bill Cloran said the one-ounce
ingots arc pul in plastic holders. Some arc
limited editions, whde others are just bul
lion, he said.
Cloran said he sells several hundred
ounces of silver in a week.
“1 never know what's going to sell,” he
said.
The silver ingots range from $8 to $T6.
“Of course, the more wealthy are buying
gold,” he said.
Cloran said business isn’t asgtxxl as last
year. He said last year the government al
lowed people to start buying gold and silver
for the first time. T his year, the novelty has
started to wear off, he said.
“| Business) has been gtxxl,”Cloran said.
“I can’t complain.”
Cloran said most customers are between
25 and 60 years old, but he’s also had a 17
ycar-old paper carrier buy ingots.
The stock market crash has also helped
business, he said, because the ingots have
more lasting value than other gifts, and their
value can increase.
“It’s hard metal, real money,” he said.
“They seem to be a good gift.”
Hughes' latest comedy fails to get laughs
Comedians funny
but aren't enough
to carry the movie
By Kevin Cowan
Senior Reporter
John Hughes likes himself. He
likes the way he writes, he adores his
comic wit and he is obviously im
pressed with his taste in music.
If this condition of self-el ficacy
wasn’t apparent in his prior films
(“Breakfast Club,” “Pretty in Pink,”
etc.) then it comes raging forward in
“Trains, Planes and Automobiles.”
He can’t break away from psychoana
lytic comedy.
Here’s your average Park Avenue
guy, played by Steve Martin, trying to
catch a flight from New York to Chi
cago with visions of Thanksgiving
pervading over the advertising at
hand.
Now to catc h the cliche cab during
a Big Apple rush hour, when he meets
up with Kevin Bacon, from “Foot
loose.”
They race to a cab two blocks
away. Martin runs in his clumsy nor
mal form and Bacon looks g(x>d as
usual.
Movie Review
Marlin manages to stay ahead, but
almost U) the cab, he trips and falls
over the steamer trunk of Del Griffith
(John Candy), and loses the race.
The collision with the trunk is the
first point in a fateful circle — a path
of irony leading to adventurous lu
nacy. It’s the kind of insanity that
results from not being able to get home
and being trapped with a person from
your closet of anxieties.
Writer, director and music pro
ducer Hughes wants to make his own
version of “After Hours.” The movie
is a black comedy of a yuppie from
East Side Manhattan who gets trapped
in Southampton and can’t get home to
save his soul no matter how hard he
tries.
The problem is that Hughes is too
afraid to gel seriously fanatic. He uses
fate to cross Martin and Candy, throws
them back in each other’s faces and
creates a scenario in which Marlin
cannot escape the shower-ring sales
man.
To make matters worse, he’s
trapped in Wichita with pig farmers
and taxi drivers educated at the school
of rural etiquette.
There’s loads of options that could
have a normal immobile American
audience cringing in fear for its safely
and wanting to leave the theater to go
home, kiss the family and make sure
the cars are still in the garage and the
money is still in the bank account.
Bui lhal’s not ihe case. Hughes
relies on the slapstick antics of Martin
and Candy to make die film surreal
and hysterical. The two veteran come
dians are funny, hut the laughs are
short-lived.
It’s not the scene, the shot or the
dialogue that are funny, hut the
audience’s predisposed knowledge of
how funny “ramblin’ guy” Martin and
fat man Candy are.
But what if Hughes is not trying to
make a funny movie?
There is an argument, a serious
undertone throughout, that quells the
laughter, and there is that superficial
dramatic ending.
Hughes is notorious for mixing
comedy with adolescent self-explora
tion and analysis. And just when the
insanity might climax, Hughes stops
and lets in barrels full of pop psychol
ogy
Hughes continues the insanity. He
runs out of ideas at the end and simply
lets them get back home, just in time
for Thanksgiving. Nothing is lost
except time and money. Martin ac
cepts Candy for his faults, and they
return to Chicago unopposed.
II Hughes had managed the gump
tion to expose the duo to more than
rural mentality, “Planes, Trains and
Automobiles” would succeed. But for
anyone accustomed to Midwestern
oddity, it’s more of a slap to the mid
section than anything else.
II the audience consists of people
whose mother used to walk them to
school every day or people who’vc
never left the city except lora two-day
vacation to Worlds of Fun, it may be
hard put to find the movie the inertia
nightmare that it tries to be.
Or, if the humor pul forth in the past
by Marlin and Candy is liked, a mati
nee will be worthwhile. But if unadul
terated and inescapable insanity is
liked, “Planes, Trains and Automo
biles” will be less exhilarating than a
weekend road trip to a small town.
